I hate parties and all my friends generally do, too, so I can’t ever really playtest it

The pieces it requires are so weird, it’d make for a really dumb physical package to buy

The idea is so stupid, simple and derivative I’d probably never charge money for it anyway

So I’m just going to post the design here and if any of you feel like trying this out with your friends or something, just lemme know.

It’s basically an attempt to just sliiiiiightly game-ify a normal house party so that there’s something silly and quirky to do midway through the night.

In this case, that silly and quirky thing is pulling out a plastic knife and stabbing someone.

SPOILERS for the Game of Thrones TV show follow, obviously. If you don’t know what “red wedding” refers to, don’t bother reading.

PREMISE

Congratulations! The Starks and the Lannisters are having a super sick party and YOU’RE invited! The bad news is, everyone is secretly plotting to murder everyone else.

OVERVIEW

Red Wedding: The Party Game is a really, really, really simple and really, really, really stupid game that you can play during any sort of house party. Half the partygoers are given RED armbands (Lannisters) when they arrive, and half the partygoers have GRAY armbands (Starks). The armbands should be visible at all times. Everyone, regardless of team, also gets a toy dagger that they can keep with them throughout the rest of the party.

After the guests have received their knife and armband, 99% of the game just consists of guests enjoying themselves as they normally would at any party: hanging out, drinking, talking.

That is, until your custom music playlist randomly selects the song “Rains of Castamere.”

At that point, everyone has TEN seconds to pull out the foam knives you gave them at the start of the party and choose ONE person to stab. If you stab someone directly from behind, then you kill them and also prevent the death of whomever that person stabbed. If you stab someone on your own team (say you’re a Stark and you stab another Stark instead of a Lannister), then you have effectively switched teams.

The host counts to ten. Once the host reaches TEN, everyone stabs somebody (or just chooses to move out of the range of anybody’s knife) at the same time.

Then, the person hosting the party counts up the number of surviving players. Whichever team has more surviving players, including turncoats from the opposite team (people who stabbed members of their own team), wins.

And then you just go back to being at a normal-ass party. Maybe the winning team gets something special. Like a cool kind of expensive beer or something. I dunno. Do people drink beer? I don’t know how parties work.

Enough armbands or nametags to clearly mark everyone at the party as either a Stark or a Lannister

A custom playlist for the party that has a bunch of cool music, and also “Rains of Castamere” hidden somewhere in it. You can either place somewhere specific in the playlist if you want the stabbing to happen at a more or less predetermined time, or you can put the playlist on shuffle and leave it to random chance (though if you do this the playlist should probably be of a manageable size so the party doesn’t go for a stupidly long time without the fun stabbing thing happening). You should also see if you can get a version of Rains of Castamere that is pretty loud compared to the other songs on your playlist, so that everyone can hear it the second it starts up.

SOME RANDOM NOTES AND STUFF:

Like I said, it’s pretty lightweight and stupid. I told Davis about it and she was like, “that’s basically just LARPing.”

This is quite possibly really stupid and not even a game. I’d been trying to think of a game you could play *during* a party that didn’t completely take over the party, and my friend Donald (from Board With Life) suggested something kinda like musical chairs: a lot of just waiting around and hanging out with a sort of quiet, almost nonexistent simmer of planning (“I’m gonna try to go for THAT chair”) that then suddenly gets interrupted by a moment of complete fucking chaos.

Hopefully, people just sort of hang out at the party and almost (but not quite) forget there’s even a game they’re playing, but they also start subtly trying to figure out who they’re going to stab, and who’s gonna stab them, and maybe they move around the party a little bit differently because of that. Or maybe they even sort of connive and plan with the other partygoers in secret, and then enact that plan (or get betrayed) during the moment of truth.

Still, it’s entirely possible that everyone immediately forgets about the game until Castamere starts playing, at which point everyone just stabs the closest person who isn’t on their team. Because this is probably really stupid and not even a game. So if anyone plays the game and finds that to be the case, I’m sorry I wasted your time.

]]>http://www.heyash.com/index.php/red-wedding-the-party-game/feed/15HAWPcast: A Game of Nets and Runnershttp://www.heyash.com/index.php/hawpcast-a-game-of-nets-and-runners/
http://www.heyash.com/index.php/hawpcast-a-game-of-nets-and-runners/#commentsFri, 06 Jun 2014 01:37:03 +0000Anthonyhttp://www.heyash.com/index.php/?p=2687

In this episode of the HAWPcast, we talk about HUGE GAME OF THRONES SPOILERS. Do NOT listen unless you’re caught up with the show, at least up to the episode entitled “The Viper and The Mountain.”

We also talk about Netrunner and the Terminal7 podcast, which is really good.

]]>http://www.heyash.com/index.php/hawpcast-a-game-of-nets-and-runners/feed/22Why I Like Sir, You Are Being Huntedhttp://www.heyash.com/index.php/why-i-like-sir-you-are-being-hunted/
http://www.heyash.com/index.php/why-i-like-sir-you-are-being-hunted/#commentsMon, 24 Mar 2014 14:40:07 +0000Anthonyhttp://www.heyash.com/index.php/?p=2680A while ago, I said I liked Mark of the Ninja because of how it gave the player complete information. Because the player knows exactly where the guards’ vision cones end and how effective their items will be, the player is empowered to make an execute complicated plans with very little fuss. Mark of the Ninja is about precision. It’s about doing supercool ninja-esque things like jumping into the air, throwing darts at two lightbulbs to bathe a room in darkness, landing directly behind a guard as he looks up in confusion at the light you just shattered, and stabbing that guard in the throat. Precision. Planning. Perfection.

Sir, You Are Being Hunted sits on the opposite end of the stealth spectrum. And it’s really damn good.

SYABH is about ambiguity and screwing up. It’s about holding your breath when a guard walks past you because you’re not sure if the tall grass you’re standing in is tall enough to totally conceal you. It’s about setting an alarm clock next to a bear trap and praying he doesn’t turn and see you before the metal jaws clamp around his robotic ankles. It’s about luring a guard away from an alien artifact, sprinting to it, trying to drag it into your inventory, and finding out, shit, you don’t have enough space in your inventory, so now you need to quickly decide which items you wanna throw away so you can grab the artifact before the robot turns around and kills you.

If Mark of the Ninja was about smirking when one of your brilliantly conceived plans goes off without a hitch, SYABH is about gasping in relief when your maybe-but-not-quite brilliant plan to surround yourself with bear traps, then fire a pistol into the air so all the guards will come running and get stuck actually pays off. Or it’s about laughing deliriously when your plan screws up, but you still get out alive thanks to your wood axe, a thermos of tea, and a handful of bandages. Or it’s about getting killed by a Landowner, cursing loudly, and re-rolling an entirely new randomly generated world because you’re going to play this game permadeath because you are For Real.

Sir, You Are Being Hunted is an open-world immersive sim with randomly generated elements. You can, just as in [Stalker/Far Cry 2/Deus Ex/Thief/BioShock/Eldritch], play the game in a variety of different ways (I’m fond of a playstyle I made up called “The Alcoholic,” a totally nonlethal character who relies on drinking whiskey for vitality and tossing the empty bottles at robots as distractions; I’ve also played as an axe and trap-wielding murderer, and a pistol specialist, and as a dude with an unusual affection for alarm clocks). And, like [Spelunky/Dungeons of Dredmor/Brogue/Risk of Rain], the randomly generated elements ensure that you can’t just mindlessly memorize level patterns and item locations: in order to be good at SYABH, you have to learn and understand the game’s underlying systems. You learn that lighting a bonfire can create a spectacular distraction – so spectacular that you might lure far more guards than you’d initially planned. You learn that night is generally safer than day, because you’re harder to see and the wisps (floaty, ethereal blobs of Aurora Borealis-y goodness that lead you to the precious alien artifacts you need to win the game) are much easier to see. You’ll learn when you can sprint and when you can’t, and how far you have to run to lose a guard once he’s spotted you.

The world is also great. I’ve spent less than 48 hours in England (and of those, I was asleep for approximately sixteen of them and watching Les Miserables for three), but the foggy, brownish, tweed-filled world of Sir, You Are Being Hunted feel like developer Big Robot’s quiet rebellion against fantastical videogame settings. Even though SYABH is a game about grabbing magic relics and evading robotic hunters, its down-to-Earth depictions of the British countryside make it feel relatable. Personal, even.

I’m basically saying I spent a full week playing SYABH with Shut Up And Sit Down video reviews running on my second monitor and now I am a British.

Sir, You Are Being Hunted is still in alpha, but it’s basically content-complete at this point. Apart from a few bugged items, though, it already feels like a complete game. You can grab it on Steam now.

(You can also change the ingame dialog and text to read “Madam, You Are Being Hunted,” which is pretty great.)

So, if you guys saw our latest HAWP, you’re probably clued into the fact that we’re now doing contract work. If you’re interested, submit one of these form doohickies and we will rap.

]]>http://www.heyash.com/index.php/we-take-contract-work/feed/9Why I Like Nidhogghttp://www.heyash.com/index.php/why-i-like-nidhogg/
http://www.heyash.com/index.php/why-i-like-nidhogg/#commentsTue, 14 Jan 2014 15:44:03 +0000Anthonyhttp://www.heyash.com/index.php/?p=2644Nidhogg is one of the best PvP games ever. I’d say it’s one of the best local multiplayer games ever made (a la Samurai Gunn and Towerfall), but it’s actually got online multiplayer.

Yomi is a Japanese term which means “knowing the mind of your opponent.” Guessing what they’re going to do and planning three steps ahead, all the while knowing that they’re also guessing what you’re about to do. I’ve heard of yomi as an idea, but I’ve never been good enough at any multiplayer game (Street Fighter, say — this Daigo vs Justin video is all about Yomi, especially the climactic moment where Daigo correctly predicts and parries an enormous combo from Justin a few milliseconds before it actually happens) to experience it for more than a half-second at a time.

After picking up Nidhogg, I experienced yomi after about five minutes of play.

Nidhogg is beautifully simple. You have an extremely limited number of verbs — jump, run, duck, stab, change sword height, divekick — and both you and your opponent die in one hit. Rather than having to memorize complex combos or input crazy strings of button presses, there is only you, your opponent, and a small but expressive series of actions. The game itself is basically fencing plus football; every map is symmetrical, with three screens extending to the left and right of a central hub screen. In order to win, you must reach the opposite end of the map (think the end zone in football) and jump into the jaws of the titular Norse dragon. You can’t just sprint past your opponent, though; In order to run to a new screen, you need the right of way, which gives you camera control and allows you to go on offense. You earn the right of way by killing your opponent once.

As a result, games are much more than simple deathmatches. Say you’ve killed your enemy and now have the right of way. Do you just try to sprint past him to the next screen? What if he turns around and stabs you in the back? Maybe you should try to fight him so he can’t chase you down. Then again, you’re faster without a sword, so maybe you should just toss your sword at your enemy to distract them, then jump over them and run like the wind. They might throw their sword at your back once you’ve run past them, though; maybe you should keep your sword so you can turn around and deflect their blade as it flies through the air. You think all of this in the span of a second, and, at the last minute, you see your opponent raise their sword to their face. Spotting an opportunity, you sprint at them, duck into a roll at the last minute, sweep your leg to knock them onto the ground, and snap their neck while you’re down there. You managed to kill your opponent and maintain the right of way without even using your sword.

These are the thoughts that fill your mind and your opponent’s after a few minutes of play. Because you aren’t forced to memorize a ludicrous number of abilities, you immediately get to the thing that matters most — the yomi. Planning. Counterplanning. Split-second decisions.

This sort of strategic thinking is baked into every part of the game. If you and your opponent both have swords when you approach each other, you enter a tight little fencing dance; your directional buttons move you in teeny tiny steps rather than the quick sprints they previously did, and now you’re wondering how to open your opponent up for a quick stab before they can get one in on you. Every time you stab, your character moves forward a liiiittle bit, which means that every attack leaves you hilariously open to counterattack. Again, your mind races with questions: what height should I raise my sword to? If it’s too low, he’ll just chuck his sword at my face; if it’s too high, he might roll under me. If I move my sword too much, though, he’ll countermove and possibly slap the sword out of my hand entirely. Should I attack first and hope I’m close enough to pierce his flesh? If I miss, he’ll counterstab and I’ll be dead.

I’m not describing rare, noteworthy moments from my time with the game. This is the stuff you think about all the time. You can’t not think about it. It’s the entire point of the game.

I highly recommend it.

]]>http://www.heyash.com/index.php/why-i-like-nidhogg/feed/9RE: Our Anita Sarkeesian podcasthttp://www.heyash.com/index.php/re-our-anita-sarkeesian-podcast/
http://www.heyash.com/index.php/re-our-anita-sarkeesian-podcast/#commentsMon, 30 Dec 2013 23:08:32 +0000Ashlyhttp://www.heyash.com/index.php/?p=2634Below the jump: an apology for condescension, some further explanation, and a request for elaboration:

So, since our podcast about Anita Sarkeesian, we’ve gotten some comments that we came off condescending, and I apologize. That is never our intention, but intentions and actions sometimes don’t sync up.

However, I still don’t understand the criticisms I’ve heard leveled against her. My attempt to mitigate that confusion, to characterize those arguments and understand the perspective of someone that would offer them came off condescending, but I can tell you it was from a genuine place. My goal is never to simplify or dehumanize someone, I just wanted to try and understand.

With that in mind, I’m earnestly and genuinely asking for elaboration on your viewpoints. But before that, let me do my own elaboration.

–One of the major critiques I hear about Anita is that she doesn’t provide counter examples for the tropes she’s laying out. In her kickstarter video, she explained that she would dedicate a video or a series of videos to explorations of those positive examples.

–Another major critique I’ve heard is that her offering tropes and describing examples isn’t enough. Her series isn’t complete, so much like the video of positive examples she has lined up, she could very well be preparing another that elucidates what steps we can take. I’m not sure, and obviously conjecture isn’t much use.

That said, I personally find highlighting tropes to be incredibly useful on its own. A lot of this stuff isn’t obvious to many people. And the best thing for addressing people that aren’t aware that this is a problem is through citing factual, indisputable examples. I’ve learned a lot from her videos, and many of my friends and content creators I respect have learned to think differently about the way they create their media because of her videos. I think just that is a win in and of itself.

–It may shock you, but I, too, don’t agree with everything Sarkeesian says. I’ve seen some of her videos outside of the Tropes vs. Women in Games project, and I disagree with some of her arguments. That said, I personally don’t see anything that’s up for debate in the content of the Tropes vs. Women in Games videos. If you have problems with omissions from the series, I can understand that, and in that case I think that’s just a situation of having different tastes or priorities, potentially. But as far as the information that is being presented, I really can’t think of any counterarguments to what she’s saying.

But, just because I can’t think of them myself doesn’t mean that they don’t exist, so if you can provide any, feel free.

–You should always feel free to criticize something. If we came off saying that Sarkeesian is beyond reproach, then that sucks and I apologize. We were mostly trying to puzzle out the people that call her out without watching the entirety of her videos, or people that personally attack her. I’d received some tweets of both kinds after recently posting one of her videos, so that’s the mindset I was in. If that came off like ALL DETRACTORS MUST BE ELIMINATED, then I’m sorry.